Christ commands us universally to love one another.

A wild woman, her mother called her. A shocking piece of work. And so she is. Lord have mercy.

Ivan considers the body a fundamentally primitive object, a vestige of evolutionary processes superseded by the development of the brain. Just compare the two: the human mind weightless, abstract, capable of supreme rationality; the human body heavy, depressingly specific, making no sense at all. It just does things: no one knows why. It begins for

Darren with his obsequious devotion to his faceless corporate employers.

Couldn’t go to work in the morning if he didn’t think something meant something meant something else. But what is it all leading up to. An end without an ending.

quieter feelings. Under what conditions is life endurable? She ought to know. Ask her. Don’t.

Call it what it is. You’re grieving, she’s always telling him. Closes his eyes at times as if in prayer: and it’s peaceful somehow. Recalling senselessly the old familiar words, worn smooth by childhood repetition. Blank tokens now, long since expired, exchangeable for nothing. Consoling merely to weigh and handle once again, yes, thy kingdom come.

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet.

You believe there is something? she asks. I try to, yeah, Ivan answers. Some kind of order in the universe, at least. I do feel that sometimes. Listening to certain music, or looking at art. Even playing chess, although that might sound weird. It’s like the order is so deep, and it’s so beautiful, I feel there must be something underneath it all.